Etymologies

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Origin uncertain; but not apparently from French corde du roi ("cloth of the king"), which was never used in French. (Wiktionary)

Examples

Corduroy's origins date back to the late 1700s England, not France as is widely believed, says James Pruden, a spokesman for Cotton Inc., a research and promotion nonprofit headquartered in Cary, N.C. The term corduroy is most likely a combination of the words "cord" and the now obsolete "duroy" or "deroy," meaning a woolen garment, he says.

At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him.

The populace had grown so hardened to artists that gruff-voiced lesbians in corduroy breeches and young men in Grecian or medieval costume could walk the streets without attracting a glance, and along the Seine banks Notre Dame it was almost impossible to pick ones way between the sketching-stools.

Here he was, dressed in corduroy trousers and a light-blue shirt; concentrating, eyes half closed or fully shut; defined gestures; confident breath; fingers flat on the open holes of his clarinet; the muscles of his mouth tight, yet not puffing out his cheeks around the mouthpiece; his upper lip surprisingly mobile, at times seeming to inhale and swallow the top of the reed and at times curling back as if to convey its decision to keep its distance, disavow that nasty instrument, and, all of a sudden, with sovereign authority, literally cut off its breath …

1780, Amer.Eng., probably from cord + obs. 17c. duroy, a coarse fabric made in England. Folk etymology is from *corde du roi "the king's cord," but this is not attested in Fr., where the term for the cloth was velours à côtes. Applied in U.S. to a road of logs across swampy ground (1822).